"That just has such a great effect on changing the culture of dependence," she told AAP.

"There are players and riders who build up this psychological dependence ... the impact on your psyche of putting something straight into your blood system is really powerful.

"That's something cycling has done that would be a clear next step for certainly the football codes, because I think there probably is a bit of a prevalent injection culture happening there as well."

Gripper said the first thing sports needed to do was to ensure all relevant staff were committed to doping-free competition.

She said TA was about to follow the recommendation of last year's Wood report into Australian cycling and introduce a declaration of integrity for all relevant personnel.

"They really need to be on their guard, all the time, about what their staff and the people you should be able to trust are doing," Gripper said.

She said Thursday's federal government bombshell about match-fixing and the use of performance-enhancing substances in Australian sport had some unsettling echoes.

"The parallels between what was revealed yesterday, what's happening in Australia, and what the situation in professional cycling was 10 years ago are quite strong," she said.

"For me, it is a sense of those people in the sport, who you should be able to trust, have let the athletes, players, clubs and employers down."

But she added the government announcement was not all bad news.

"Even though it's been said yesterday was a blackest day in Australian sport, it was an exceptionally bright day for athletes, coaches and sports scientists who choose to do the right thing," she said.

Gripper added that not many countries had enough resources to crack down properly on doping.

"There are only two countries in the world that could do this - that's the US and Australia.

"The UK are getting there."

Gripper helped introduce the biological passport to cycling and there is little doubt this has had an effect on doping in the sport.

But she said it only worked for blood doping at the moment - not peptides or growth hormones.

"It's getting to the point (with) hormone-based substances, there will be some way of detecting human growth hormones - it's still a little way from that," she said.

But Gripper said the current biological passport program could be applicable to the AFL.

"Certainly AFL players, they run 10km or something in a match, so that would make EPO and blood transfusions relevant to them," she said.